


Sharing the Same Skin

by Masu_Trout



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dark, Gen, Medical Experimentation, Snakes, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 10:43:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7973890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yakushi Kabuto kills his soulmate before he even realizes he's found him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharing the Same Skin

**Author's Note:**

> I've always liked soulmate AUs and I've always loved Kabuto's particular brand of messed-up, so... combination time?

Yakushi Kabuto kills his soulmate before he even realizes he's found him.

It isn't until hours later—head tilted under the hot spray of his little shower in his little room deep in the bowels of one of Otogakure's labs, water hitting just right to loosen the blood and the vomit and the caked-on viscera from his hair and skin—that he realizes something feels off about his body. There's a sore point just under his left arm, a spot stretching across his torso that feels raw and strange.

His first exasperated thought is, _I've been poisoned_. Wouldn't be the first time; he's a careful man, but Orochimaru's experiments are varied and fascinating and their bodies tend to come with rather unorthodox defense mechanisms. He's been bitten and stung, he's had acid spat at him… one very memorable evening involving a captured shinobi with a _fascinating_ bloodline limit ended in him picking maggots out of his internal organs for several hours.

When he leans in to examine the patch of skin, though, mind already racing through antidotes he should start preparing, Kabuto quickly realizes that it's none of those things. There's no wound, no blood or weeping ooze. All he sees are lines and lines of black ink, stretching from the bottom of his ribcage to just under his armpit in a tight, oblong spiral. The shape starts from a point right in the center of his side and curls around itself as it radiates outward.

 _A mark,_ he realizes with no small amount of surprise.

There aren't any words to the tattoo that's spread itself across his body. There are barely any _letters_ to the tattoo, and the ones that are there are ragged-edged and barely coherent. Most of it is just lines, looping and twisting and intersecting in jagged troughs and brittle spikes. There is a pattern to it, though, an emotion behind the scrawling thing curled against his body.

 _Pain,_ it screams up at him. _Terror. Anguish. Fear._

Kabuto traces two fingers across the point where a cluster of vowels smooths back out into indecipherable scribbling and smiles.

–

It takes him a further fifteen minutes to finish washing himself, and another five after that to get dressed once more. Pulling his shirt on goes a little slower than usual; he keeps stopping and twisting to feel the strange ache of the mark against his skin and the texture of the fresh ink when he rubs his hands against it. After, he pulls his hair back into his usual ponytail, ignoring the rivulets of water that drip down his neck and under his collar, and perches his glasses back onto his nose.

Kabuto heads back down into the labs. He's not supposed to be there—the experiments have already finished for the night. This isn't his normal schedule.

None of the guards question him.

(He should probably report them for that. Orochimaru would want to know. But it suits him better to be allowed unchecked access to the laboratories here, so he only files it away for potential future use.)

Down he heads, towards the deepest corners of the labs. Past the cells that stink of fear and the rooms full of gleaming sterile equipment, beyond even the bloodstained operating theaters. The door he finally opens is small and inconspicuous, set as it is into the stone walls. 

The room inside is filled with corpses. They lie heaped upon each other, whole or in pieces, a testament to a long day's work. 

(Mostly useless work, unfortunately. Orochimaru's latest idea is… unlikely to bear fruit, to say the least. But Kabuto would not be the loyal servant he is if he did not make every attempt to ensure its success nonetheless.)

Scorch marks mar the walls and ceiling, and beyond the overwhelming stench of blood and bile Kabuto can taste just the tiniest hint of ash in the air. This is the incineration room, a funeral parlor and a final resting place in one. Tomorrow, someone skilled in fire release will come by and burn the room until there is nothing left of its occupants, until the air here smells of nothing more than soot once more.

 _Lucky that I realized tonight, then_ , Kabuto thinks.

He grimaces down at the pile, knowing full well that he'll need another shower once this is done, and then starts sifting through the pile of corpses.

It's slow, frustrating work. Each body has to be stripped and checked for markings; the ones covered in blood have to be cleaned, the ones in pieces have to be matched together again. There's no guarantee that his soulmate's mark will match Kabuto's in location, so he has no choice but to examine each inch of skin for any hint of words.

(He isn't quite sure why he's doing this. There's nothing that should compel him to dig through this pile of gore, nothing forcing him to dirty his hands this way. It's just… he'd like to know, that's all. He'd like to know what he said to the person fate was convinced he could love.)

Twice, he finds a mark, only to realize that it cannot possibly be his match. 

The first is too faded to be a newly-made connection—the line, a single small word ( _hello_ ) lacking either capital letters or punctuation, is so blue and faint that it almost blends in with the corpse's veins. He tosses the wrist and the arm attached to it in with the rest of the negatives.

The second is much fresher, abyss-black against the pale skin of the dead woman's neck, and for a moment Kabuto's heart leaps in victory. Then he peers in at the tiny writing there and his hopes are dashed once more.

 _I love you._ the words on her body say. Kabuto remembers every action he performed over the last twenty-four hours, and he did not (would never) profess his love to an experiment he was in the middle of testing to destruction. In any other circumstance, the very idea would be enough to bring a genuine smile to his face.

Still. The mark is brilliantly fresh. Perhaps a week old at most. He wonders if this woman was a new capture, or if she found her soul's other half deep in the prison cells of Otogakure.

“Poor thing,” he says to her. Carefully, Kabuto scoops her up into his arms and deposits her gently on top of the pile of rejects. She's still mostly whole—only a deep cut in her belly and a few missing organs marks her as one of his—and touching her leaves relatively little mess.

The third he finds—the third is his. It once was a man somewhere in his twenties, with skin the color of sand and bleached-white hair. (A Lightning Country native, perhaps, or maybe simply someone with their coloring.) Now it is nothing more than a corpse: its eyes and hands are missing and its lips are a mass of bruised and bloodied flesh where he nearly bit through them screaming.

(Kabuto looks at the corpse and, even before he checks for a mark, thinks, _this is the one_. He remembers the way the man screamed, remembers the hatred and the anguish of it. This is the one who left that message on his body.)

When he peers down to look, he finds three small words printed on the man's back just above the just of his cervical spine.

 _Please calm down_ the man's soulmark reads in small, dark, precise letters. The skin around the sentence is swollen to the touch, a perfect match to Kabuto's own.

 _Interesting_ , Kabuto thinks. He remembers saying those words to the man, a gentle admonishment as he strapped him into his restraints and reached for his first scalpel. 

He would have thought there would be a comma, though. He remembers the sentence coming out with a pause, more _Please, calm down_ than _Please calm down_. It annoys him a little that there isn't one—is he remembering wrong? Did the words come out differently than he thought?

He supposes it probably doesn't matter. Fate can place its commas where it wants.

After some time spent staring and rubbing his fingers against the dark ink, Kabuto stands up. His fingers dance through the hand signs for a summoning. A moment later there is a burst of choking smoke and a dark purple snake—small enough to fit in the room, if only barely—coils itself around Kabuto.

The creature's head swivels slowly left and right, examining the bodies all around it. “My, _sss_ umoner,” it hisses, “you've brought me quite a fea _sss_ t.”

Kabuto shakes his head and fixes an apologetic expression on his face, ever contrite. “Not today, I'm afraid.” He nudges his soulmate's body with the toe of his sandal. “I just need you to eat this one, that's all.”

“That one?” The snake fixes one massive eye on him. If reptiles could look pitiful, this one would. “No more?”

“No more,” Kabuto repeats. “If you do this for me, though, I'll make sure to bring more for you in the future.”

They both stand silent as the snake considers his offer. Finally, slowly, his summon nods. It uncurls just enough to reach the body and unhinges its massive jaw.

Kabuto watches as his soulmate disappears down his summon's gullet. His mouth goes dry at the sight. His fingers itch. He finds he is jealous of the snake, though he can't imagine why. 

He wonders what it would be like to swallow the other half of his soul. If he were able to devour himself that thoroughly, would it make him complete? Would it fill any of the holes carved into him from serving so many masters?

Kabuto runs his hand over his side. He can feel the raised ink of the scream even through his clothes. 

_Probably not,_ he decides.

When the last of the body has disappeared down the snake's throat, it turns back to him with a satisfied look in its golden eyes. “I _sss_ there anything more you need, _sss_ ummoner?” Its gaze flicks to the other bodies piled up in the tiny room. 

This particular snake isn't all that intelligent, despite its capacity for speech. If Kabuto allowed it, the creature would probably eat until it burst.

“Nothing else,” Kabuto says politely, and weaves his hands through the dispelling. 

Kabuto leaves as the smoke clears from the room. He locks it behind him and walks back upwards, past the cells and the operating rooms and the guards (who give each other quick, nervous looks at the sight of the new blood on Kabuto's clothes and once again say nothing to him). 

Back in his own room, he strips his clothes off once more. They're bloody, but not unsalvageable, so he balls them up and tosses them into a corner; he'll clean them off later. Contrary to what most of his acquaintances believe, he's only _truly_ fastidious within the bounds of the operating room and his experiments. A little bit of clutter is a sign of a healthy mind, someone once told him, and he knows his mind isn't healthy but he tries to follow the advice anyway. 

Perhaps he's hoping it will work even with cause and effect reversed. Perhaps he just wants an excuse not to clean his room. Even he doesn't understand his own motivations half the time these days.

He steps back into the shower, turns the knob to its hottest setting, and watches as pink-tinted water swirls down the drain. The ink, he knows, won't wash away so easily.

After a moment's consideration, Kabuto decides he's all right with that. There are jutsus he could use if he wanted it gone, but… well, it is a rather beautiful mark, aesthetically speaking. Certainly much nicer-looking than the plain words most people bear.

He touches it once more—sore from the newness and the heat alike—and shivers. 

Such a shame it hadn't decided to write itself across his arms or legs instead. He would have liked to show it off occasionally.


End file.
